![]() ![]() The purpose of the loopback range is testing of the TCP/IP protocol implementation on a host. ![]() If it's a whole class A, what is the point of other arbitrary values for the last three octets? Noĭatagram "sent" to a network 127 address should ever appear on To a network 127 address should loop back inside the host. The class A network number 127 is assigned the "loopback"įunction, that is, a datagram sent by a higher level protocol Why is there more than one loopback IP address? One key reason for this may be that some people really were wanting to help push people towards IPv6 adoption. It was decided that supporting some standards may be more desirable than helping IPv4 to limp along even more. Poke around those, or some other standards, and I'm pretty sure you can find some other large amounts of addresses that are not being super-efficiently used/allocated. The older RFC 5735 had much of the same information in a different format, e.g. To see some others: IETF BCP 153 (currently points to RFC 6890). But don't think for a minute that every last address has been used in the most effective way possible. IANA has just been handing out the addresses from the former Class A, Class B, and Class C. So, don't think that we're almost out of IPv4 addresses. Allow me to rile you up further :)Īctually, the much bigger waste of IPv4 addresses is 224/3, which contains 224/4 (minimally used for multicast) and 240/4 (almost entirely wasted, with just one address as the exception). Totally and completely unconscionable waste of spaceĪh, such strong language. (However, having unique addresses might be easier in some cases, like if you had multiple servers that could listen to the same "default" port number.) Other VPN software may also be a frequent user for such things, as Isaac Hanson referred to in his answer.) Whether you use different TCP ports on one address (there are 65,535 of them), or multiple IP addresses, makes little technical difference. But, since IANA has now reserved all of them for that purpose, there is no compelling reason for a TCP/IP stack to not support them.įor the most part, there's no compelling need for multiple addresses I often use multiple loopback connections, but can do so simply by specifying different TCP ports. If a computer has no need for more than one loopback address, or zero of them, there's no reason it has to support all those addresses. Cisco IOS supports no loopback addresses by default, but does support the loopback concept, and addresses can be manually assigned. Win95 supported 127.0.0.1 but not other 127/8 addresses. ![]()
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